Too much of Canberra's suburban land is set aside for detached homes, which is the true reason residents are denied housing choice in the capital, a group advocating for intelligent urban infill has said.
Greater Canberra, a newly-established community association calling for planning changes to allow for more houses to be built in the lower density inner-city areas, has welcomed broad agreement in the Legislative Assembly this week more housing choices are needed.
The group's convenor, Howard Maclean, said the current debate about housing in the ACT had regularly presented a false choice between a detached home on a sizeable block and large-scale apartment towers, rather than exploring the "missing middle" of medium density unit-titled dwellings.
"The main reason homes are unaffordable in Canberra is that there's not enough of them. The Legislative Assembly should allow unit-titled duplexes across Canberra, and embrace new types of housing like the Manor House and co-housing demonstration housing projects," Mr Maclean said.
Mr Maclean said 80 per cent of residential land is zoned for single family homes, and the territory's planning laws prohibited the construction of medium density homes close to jobs and amenities in established suburbs.
"We do find this entire houses versus apartments kind of culture war to be unhelpful. The focus should be on how do we create the most sustainable, liveable and affordable Canberra for the most number of people, rather than, you know, do we have detached homes or apartments, because in many cases it's a false choice," he said.
Mr Maclean said Greater Canberra was predominantly a youth-led organisation advocating for planning changes, but said it was cross-generational in its membership.
The subject of residential land supply has dominated debate in the Legislative Assembly this year, with the opposition emphasising the government's land supply decisions as a leading cause of housing affordability pressures in the territory.
Just a quarter of new dwellings in the ACT will be on new single-dwelling blocks over the next five years. More than half of dwellings to be released over the five-year program will be on urban infill sites.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr defended the land release program last month, arguing the government had little control over house prices in the capital's inner-city suburbs because the supply of new land there was finite.
Elizabeth Kikkert, a Canberra Liberals member for Ginninderra, told an Assembly debate on Thursday the government's policy to release more land for high-density dwellings than detached houses could have a lasting mental health and social development impact on children and showed the government was beholden to a radical population control agenda.
Mrs Kikkert cited a string of studies that found people who lived in apartments were more likely to experience mental ill-health, but did not cite the studies' suggestions for design improvements.
Labor minister Tara Cheyne, who lives in an apartment, told the Assembly she was "gobsmacked" by Mrs Kikkert's comments.
Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee, who moved the motion that prompted the housing choice debate, said Canberrans' housing choices had been picked for them by the government.
"This is not choice when this government indicative land program specifically dictates to the community 70 per cent of you are going to be forced into apartments whether you like it or not; that is not a choice," Ms Lee said.
